International travel during covid (omicron variant) –  January 2022

International travel has been tough in the past 2 years. But things are finally falling back into place.

I am sharing my recent travel experience here in this blog and by the end of this blog you should be confident enough to travel fearlessly like a lion although there’s news that lions have tested positive for covid as well.

By the way, I’m still wondering who that fearless person is who put a swab in Lion’s nose to take nasal swab sample. 🤣

By Amit Tandon – Stand-up Comedian

The route

Anyone taking this route, please feel free to reach out to me if this blog doesn’t answer your question. I will be more than happy to help you out.

Emirates onward journey – CALGARY > LOS ANGELES > DUBAI > MUMBAI

Emirates return journey – MUMBAI > DUBAI > TORONTO > CALGARY

I travelled from Calgary, Canada to Mumbai, India & back and it was a very nice experience unlike what I was hearing from several sources. Infact, it was a very straight forward journey except one operational (non-covid related) hiccup which the airlines took care of very promptly. I will discuss more about this further in the blog. Never during the journey did I feel there there are disruptions due to covid. Except the fact that you need to wear a mask at all times, be it at the airport, on-board a flight, on-board ground transportation and everywhere. But now after almost 2 years of living with this virus around us, mask has kind of become a part of our body. So, it doesn’t really bother anymore other than it fogs up my glasses. 🤣

Checking restrictions

I started by checking various blogs & forums, airlines, travel websites, friends & family who had recently travelled, government websites, etc. Finally, after much research it was very clear where to look for a consolidated list of all travel restrictions and requirements.

https://www.iatatravelcentre.com/world.php

This website is referred to by several airlines on their official page. It came as a life saver for me. It can be a single source of information for all covid or air travel related matters. For example, which country has what kind of travel restrictions, testing requirements, quarantine guidelines, documentations required, etc.

All we need to do is select the origin country, destination country and all the stopover/transit countries… and that’s it! The website gives us all the information required in a very organized manner. You can either use the web version or temporarily download the app until you’re travelling.

Tackling hiccups

So, coming back to the journey. It was as smooth as it could be except for that one hiccup where the airlines cancelled their Los Angeles to Calgary flight due to some operational issue. I got this email from emirates while I was at Dubai Airport and I went straight to the connections desk to get myself onto a new flight. There was a long queue but they took care of me eventually and changed my route. I was originally supposed to be flying DUBAI > LOS ANGELES > CALGARY but because of the flight cancelation they put me on DUBAI > TORONTO > CALGARY. Ofcourse, I didn’t have to pay anything extra because it was a change because the airlines canceled the flight and I didn’t mind traveling via Toronto. So, everything worked out well and I finally reached Calgary on time.

Testing requirements

I did my first testing 18 hours before leaving Canada. That was the only testing done during the onward journey. During the return journey,  I got a test done 24 hours before leaving India and there was another one at the port of entry in Canada, they test you for covid free of charge. There was a long queue and the testing itself took about 30-45 mins. But my next connection wasn’t flying until 3 hours later, so I was in no rush. So, it’s always a good idea to keep atleast 3-4 hours between connections to accommodate such unexpected delays.

Hope this blog answered your questions. If any of your questions remained unanswered, please feel free to ask in the comments sections below or reach out to me on Instagram.

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A post shared by Yogesh G Badgeri (@yogiventurous)